While knowledge realms like StackOverflow are invaluable to solving programming issues, there's something to be said for a good coding book that not only teaches you the how, but the why. Here are some of our team's favorite programming books.

We have been using Bootstrap as our go-to frontend framework for a few years now and it has been working great. The next version of Bootstrap is on the horizon and currently has an alpha release. Let’s take a look at what Bootstrap 4 has in store for us.

In the past year or so, the front-end developers at Planet Argon have taken more of a modular approach to writing CSS. This means writing CSS in a way that promotes forward-thinking, scalability, and ease of development. Before I get into the pros and cons, here’s a quick example of the difference between a modular and non-modular approach.

Here is a little knowledge nugget that Jack and I picked up during our time at An Event Apart: Seattle (more on that to come). We learned about this handy little site called caniuse.com that was created by Alexis Deveria. The site lets you look up HTML5, CSS, JS API, SVG, etc. elements to see what their support is across browsers. Then you can assess.. Can I use that?

We are freshly back from the conference and I have already started using and benefiting from it. Give it a look and find out what you can use. (Turns out you can use the first-child pseudo-element in IE8!)

Your website, just like your car, is often due for a bit of maintenance. Fortunately, tuning up your website is less intimidating than that familiar experience of standing next to your vehicle, nodding your head dumbly while handing your mechanic (who, by the way, is much more ruggedly handsome than you) a wad of cash. And that is even less daunting than attempting to work on the car yourself- you’ve tried that before, and you still have nightmares and stained pants.

I recently interviewed Thomas Fuchs, Ruby on Rails core alumnus, software developer, and author of new e-book, ‘Retinafy Your Web Sites and Apps.’ It’s a concise collection of tips, recommendations, and code snippets for web developers interested in preparing their sites for retina phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops of the present and future.

With the functional prototype and the design work in the can, we got the opportunity to start work on the front-end implementation for Contiki’s mobile website . Since we had a good dose of working with the jQuery mobile framework from the prototype, we were able to dive right in and get to work.

Our team is currently working on a series of white papers and have just finished our first one, which introduces businesses to two strategies for designing and developing a site that targets mobile traffic.

Given that we've approached several projects from both angles, we felt that it would be worthwhile to share our experiences of each with you.

Peter-Paul Koch, of quirksmode fame, recently gave an enlightening presentation about the mobile viewport which, quite fortunately for all of us, is available in video and slide form. “A pixel is not a pixel”, clocking in at just over an hour, is quite thorough and enjoyably dense, so watch it. But, if you don’t have an hour to spare, this is the gist of it:

With all of the talk about mobile best practices, some are neglecting to factor in the reality of existing sites and existing budgets. Just because you don’t have the time or money to completely revamp your site for a mobile audience doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider a mobile strategy. A separate mobile-version of your website might be the perfect first step.

Last night, I was fortunate enough to participate in a dry run of Jason Grigsby and Lyza Danger Gardner’s WebVisions New York mobile workshop- the somewhat awkwardly titled “Zombie Apocalypse of Devices Preparedness 101.”

When I joined the team here at Planet Argon, LESS was being used to code and compile the current CSS files. When a new client project came along, we started the transition to using Sass. The decision was made to use Sass when it was included in Rails 3.1. Being a Rails shop, we wanted follow the conventions that were being advocated by leaders of the Rails community. The differences between the syntax of Sass and LESS are minor, but the process of transitioning our largest project to SASS has had its issues.

Contiki is the worldwide leader in tours for 18-35’s and operates in over 40 countries around the world. For more than fifty years, Contiki has primarily relied on print brochures to allure and entice young adults to explore the globe. The printed brochures provide detailed and photographic overviews of the many available tours and benefits of going Contiki, however they do not provide the same flexibility and accessibility of an always up-to-date website.

Regardless, Contiki still has a large customer base that prefers to flip through a physical brochure just like many of us do with our annual Ikea catalog. While we cannot share the correlation between print brochures and purchasing decisions, there is still a significant percentage of customers that use the printed brochure to decide which product to purchase. So it was critical that we improve the user interaction to increase leads here.